Re: EU plans decryption ban

[Dave Emery <die@die.com>]

On Mon, Mar 09, 1998 at 11:26:15PM +0000, Markus Kuhn wrote:
> After government attempts to ban unrestricted encryption, we are
> now facing a decryption ban
> 
> Industry lobbyist groups have managed to persuade the European
> Commission to introduce rather radical new legislation for protecting
> pay-TV broadcasters against unauthorized reception by consumers. Not
> only the commercial advertising and sale of pirate devices is to be
> prohibited (this has already been the case in a number of member
> countries and is perfectly acceptable), but also the private possession or
> use of clone decoders as well as any private exchange of information about
> the security properties of pay-TV encryption systems will become illegal
> and punishable under the planned EU conditional access directive. 
> 
	In the US there is not yet a ban on exchange of information
because of the potential first amendment issues, but there are (and have
been since the late 1980s)  felony level bans with $500,000 fines for
each incident  on the manufacture, assembly, modification, import,
export, sale and distribution of any device or equipment primarily of
assistance in the unauthorized decryption of satellite cable programming
or direct to home satellite.

	And unauthorized interception of radio signals including satellite
video transmissions that are scrambled or encrypted can be prosecuted
under current law as a felony.



-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die@die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2  5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18